Is there a way to clean up old archival footage in FCP 7 or Motion?

Is it possible to clean up video noise on old archival footage in FCP 7 or Motion 4 or 5? Or, does it need to be done professionally?


We found archival footage on YouTube -- two B & W 16 mm films shot in 1920. The video noise is a lot more noticeable in the sharper, expensive standard def footage we licensed.











Thank you!

What exactly is it you'd like to achieve? Get rid of the artifacting put in by transferring to video, or remove dirt and scratches, or get more definition from the picture? The quality of the originals was probably not that great, given the methods and lenses of the day.

Jude you're correct, the footage is not great to begin with. I just want to reduce the noise. Are you familiar with any noise reduction filters or plug ins?

YOu dont get much better than Neat Video

[www.neatvideo.com]

Michael Horton
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Agree. Neat Video gets the thumbs up around here for noise.

yeah, i'm slightly unclear on what the issue is.

can you post images of the SD version?

those YOUTUBE screen grabs are nowhere near good enough quality for anything, i would imagine.
next to nothing you can do with those.

to answer your specific question,
yes, there are FCP-based solutions for noise reduction.
NEAT VIDEO is one that's pretty affordable. ($50 for "home" version, $100 for "pro" from memory)
there are others (I don't remember the specifics) that are more expensive.


i'll also add that we've been bitten recently with on-line stock footage.
the sample is so small, you can't really see the noise and grain that's on the full-res clip.
some were clearly (once you could see them) shot on not very good cameras.



nick

ok, so i typed up my response this morning, then didn't hit post till this afternoon!
glad everyone else likes neat video

nm

Thank you so much! I've give it a try!

I keep raving about Topaz Enhance, but that's no longer available, and it does not work with ProRes, but DID enhance old analog - to -DV-NTSC video, and brought out unexpected detail. That, in conjunction with NEAT denoising and Motion (or After Effects) for image stabilization, followed by a nice long session in After Effects or Photoshop Extended for the image repair and dustbusting, and you should have a respectable result.

What you might do instead is see if you can rent some time in a supersuite offering Miranda or Teranex service to enhance it in hardware. Take that home for additional tweaks you can do with off the shelf software.

Am I the only one here who still uses Topaz? It was slow processing, roughly two minutes per hour on an 8-core 2.26 Mac Pro. Topaz, like Neat DeNoiser, had the capability to borrow data from unblemished neighboring frames to build new frames with greater detail. (Hm! Wonder if they licensed from Topaz Labs?) It could look ahead and behind anywhere from 1 to 5 frames-- the deeper the look-ahead, the longer the processing.




Here's a sample of Topaz-enhanced footage using only off the shelf tools for dustbusting and the like:

It takes time, there's a fair amount of frame-by-frame handwork.
This 15 minutes took two weeks. Parts of this could have been done better. Image stabilization was FCP7's Smoothcam. The end crawl here for instance is a first draft Photoshop file animated in FCP, not Motion or AE.

The dustbusting was done in Photoshop Extended CS4- AE wasn't available.

This is a big area of interest to me. Imagine the work restoring classics like LAWRENCE OF ARABIA!

- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytip:
Advance to next/previous keyframes in a clip with Shift/Option-K !

Your Final Cut Studio KeyGuide™ Power Pack
with FCP7 KeyGuide --
now available at KeyGuide Central.
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